Taranjeet Singh quits as Twitter's Country Director for India; Balaji Krish to come in as interim head

Twitter's Country Director for India, Taranjeet Singh, yesterday announced his resignation, just 16 months after he was promoted to the position. "Hello everyone, after 4 amazing years, I have decided to move on from @TwitterIndia - from being one of the first @Twitter employees in #India, to building up the sales team from the ground up, to leading our expansion and investments as the India Country Director #AmazingRide," he tweeted yesterday morning.

According to him, Balaji Krish, Twitter's global head of revenue strategy and operations, is relocating from the US to take over as the interim country lead till a replacement is hired. "I'll spend the next month transitioning my country duties to colleague and friend @BalajiKris," Singh tweeted, adding, "We'll ensure that @Twitter won't miss a beat here".

Prior to being elevated to Country Director in May 2017, Singh was leading the charge for sales and marketing support for the microblogging site's advertisers in India. At the time, Twitter India had said in a statement that Singh would focus on accelerating Twitter's audience and revenue growth in this "key growth market". He certainly succeeded on that count - he reportedly helped double Twitter's user base to nearly 30 million users in India.

While other social media giants like Facebook and its subsidiary WhatsApp have run afoul of the government over issues ranging from fake news to its commitment to end-to-end encryption, Twitter India has managed to steer clear of troubled waters.

"I'm proud to say that @TwitterIndia is in a strong position and will continue to grow stronger in the years to come," read another of Singh's tweets. He added that "India is one of our largest and fastest growing markets worldwide today. We have hired many Tweeps at @TwitterIndia, diversified our client base across the country and continue to be the pulse of Indian society - breaking news, sports, entertainment, politics #Growth".

The big question now is how quickly Twitter can find his replacement. Facebook has been trying to find itself a country head since last October while Google is aggressively wooing top talent to build its leadership team in India. Prior to joining Twitter, Singh served as the Sales Director (South Asia) for BBC Advertising and held various positions at Outlook Publishing.

With PTI inputs